Twelve South StayGo USB-C Hub REVIEW

First-class, desktop-friendly USB-C hub.

This past week has been somewhat of a roller coaster for me at work. I have several major projects in the works and late last week, my desktop computer decided it had enough and refused to start-up. I handed it over to our IT Manager to see if he could bring it back from the dead, but in the meantime, what was I supposed to work from? I couldn’t just take time off from work because my computer was out of commission. Thankfully, I had my personal MacBook Pro with me and I could easily tie into my workstation set-up using the newly released Twelve South StayGo USB-C Hub.

DETAILS

The StayGo USB-C Hub is the first ‘desktop-friendly’ USB-C Hub. Twelve South’s designers delivered all the ports you need to connect to your favorite peripherals, but provided a setup long enough to be able to tuck away all the connected cables so that your desktop stays neat and clean. In addition to the semi-permanent installation you have with a desktop workspace, Twelve South also made it possible for the StayGo to be flexible and portable by including a 6-inch travel cable that stores inside the hub itself.

SPECS & FEATURES

• USB-C (to MacBook or iPad Pro)pass-thru 85W USB-C PD charging
• 4k HDMI: Crystal clear 4K x 2k @ 30Hz HDMI / Full 1080p
• USB-A 3.0 / BC 1.2 Charging Port: SuperSpeed up to 5 Gbps with BC 1.2 7.5W Fast Charge
• USB-A 3.0: SuperSpeed up to 5 Gbps with 900mA power; fully backwards compatible
• Gigabit Ethernet Port: Support 10/100/1000Mbps via RJ45 connection
• USB-C (to External power): 100W Max USB-C power input
• SD Card: Secure Digital v3.0 UHS-I 
• Micro SD Card: Secure Digital v3.0 UHS-I 
• Aluminum exterior shell dissipates heat
• Plug & Play: no drivers required
• Dual SD Slots support simultaneous data connection

USER EXPERIENCE

As great as the newer MacBook Pros are, they have one fatal flaw — limited connectivity. For the past several years, I’ve been working through USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 hubs to make sure I could properly connect to all the peripherals I needed to get my work done. I do carry a generic one around with me, but it gets hot very quickly so I’m always nervous to use it for more than a quick connection. When I was faced with needing to stay connected for an entire workday, I grabbed up the StayGo and got to work. Because it has an aluminum body, it stays much cooler than some other hubs I’ve used. I did notice that it warmed up a ‘bit’ after several hours, but it wasn’t hot to the touch like the generic hub I was carrying around before the StayGo. 

At my computer workstation, I had a monitor connected through HDMI, a keyboard connected through USB, and on occasion, I would plug in a USB flash drive so that I could save files for printing at a later time. I also had the charger for the MacBook Pro connected for power delivery through the hub. For the four days I had to work with my MacBook Pro connected in this manner, it worked flawlessly. The monitor’s picture was crisp and clear, the hub never overheated, and the keyboard remained connected (I also had a USB mouse plugged directly into the keyboard) without any missed keystrokes. 

Twelve South really did a great job with the design of this hub because they eliminated one of my biggest headaches — cable clutter. This hub is designed to provide you connectivity wherever you go, but if you decide to use it as your main hub for your workstation, you can easily hardwire it into your system and all the cables for the peripherals will be coming out of the back instead of snaking around the device like a lot of other hubs.

As far as real-world testing goes, I feel as though the StayGo exceeded my expectations. Even though my use of the hub didn’t quite include speed testing, I did complete a disk speed test on a USB 3.0 flash drive as well as a data transfer test. With the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, I got a result of 51.3 MB/s WRITE and 204.4 MB/s READ. With the data transfer speed test, I copied a file that 2.36GB in size. It took approximately 33 seconds to transfer from my computer to the flash drive using the hub as a conduit. 

One of my favorite features of the StayGo is the fact that it comes with two cables – a long one (3-foot with a right angle on one end) and a short one (6 inches). The short cable is stored inside the hub. That means you can just grab the hub and go anywhere without having to tuck a long, cumbersome cable into a bag. I LOVE this feature because you will always have a cable with you and you don’t have to worry about remembering one.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the StayGo is a big hit with me. Between the cable clutter reduction, low heat collection, and easy connectivity to my favorite accessories, it’s pretty much a ‘go-to’ item for me. There are a lot of options for hubs out there and while some might be a little more budget-friendly, I think the StayGo is definitely worth the investment.

For more information, visit twelvesouth.com, Facebook, and Twitter.